Overshadowed
by autumn midnights
Summary: All of the Weasley-Potters have something special about them...except Albus, who constantly feels overshadowed by the rest of his family. Character exploration, pretty much. No pairings.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: This is for the Fanfiction Tournaments Competition, Round Three, over on the HPFC forum, which required writing about a character in their third year of Hogwarts. It is also for the Honeydukes Competition on the HPFC forum, Jelly Slugs division, which required writing a fic about a next-gen character.

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Albus Severus Potter sometimes wished that he was in a different family.

It wasn't that he didn't love his family. No, the Weasley-Potter family was a tight-knit bunch, whether at Hogwarts or at home, and they would always have each other's backs. He loved them all, just as they loved him.

He was constantly overshadowed by one or the other, though. Everyone knew that the three Potter children were cousins of the numerous Weasleys, and as a result, everyone was always compared to the others. But, unlike Al, all the others had something special about them, and even Victoire and Freddie, who had left school by Al's third year, were still constantly talked about.

Victoire was beautiful. Freddie had been the star of the Gryffindor Quidditch team; now he was going professional. Dominique was Head Girl and top of her class. James was a popular ladies' man, even at fourteen. Roxanne was a Quidditch star and James's best friend, which automatically made her popular as well. Molly was brilliant. Rose wanted accomplishments to set her apart from her parents, and she was well on her way to succeeding - she was top of the class and planned to become an Auror. Louis was already growing into his looks, and would probably be more of a ladies' man than James in a year or two's time. Lucy was an amateur writer. Lily was the first Potter in Slytherin, and a troublemaker to rival the Marauders. Hugo was plotting an epic novel about the Second Wizarding War - and he was only eleven.

Everyone expected great things out of Al. They thought he would be a great Quidditch star or top of the class. Others thought that he would be like James, who had friends in seventh year despite only being a fourth year himself, and had dated a sixth year. They didn't think Albus Potter would be just an average, not-so-special Hogwarts student. Al always knew it was his family that was special, not him.

He hated being overshadowed that way. He hated how the other students would look at him, then turn back to their friends and whisper. He knew the things that they said. "_Wow, look at him, and then look at the rest of the Weasley-Potters." "You know Albus Potter? Yeah, the one who isn't as awesome as the rest of them." "Albus Potter, the third year Hufflepuff - he's a Weasley-Potter, why hasn't he done anything great yet?" _

His name didn't help matters. Not that people made fun of him for it - after all, the Wizarding world had many odd names, and Albus Severus probably wasn't the weirdest. No, it was that he was also compared to his namesakes, just like James, Molly, Freddie, and Lily were. James was nearly identical to his namesake, Molly and Freddie ignored the comparisons, and Lily basically was the opposite of her namesake; however they didn't ever let it bother them. Albus despised the comparisons, though. People would say things about how he would never be as brilliant as Albus Dumbledore, or as heroic as Severus Snape. He would always be just Al.

No one understood. His family - well, they were all special. They all had things about them that made them stick out, and he was just an average boy. There were other normal boys at Hogwarts, of course, but none of them were famous. They couldn't totally understand his situation either.

He occasionally entertained fantasies of being someone else: either being himself in a different family, or actually having something impressive about himself and staying a Potter. He didn't know which was better, and would usually go back and forth between them. After all, which would be better? To be an average boy in a different family, and not have the pressures put on him, or to be in this family, and have expectations on him, but not caring about it too much because he had something special about him?

He wasn't sure, but he knew that either of them would be better than his current lifestyle. He cared about what people said about him, and he hated it. He was a thirteen-year-old boy; he should be able to not bother with what people said about him.

Al looked forward to leaving Hogwarts; he held hopes that perhaps, when he got out into the real world, things would be slightly better. He wasn't sure, but that didn't stop him from dreaming about a day when he wouldn't be compared to the rest of his family.

He wondered if that day would ever come.

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**This is really how I see Al, to be honest. I know Hufflepuff!Al isn't the most common, but I almost always write him in that house. This whole fic pretty much fits in with my personal canon of the next generation :)**

**Thanks for reading!**


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